SPEAK OUT: Union bill is un-American

Fair disclosure: I am an employer, which means I definitely have a bias opposite from Gary Sullivan, who recently wrote extolling the benefits of the Employee Free-Choice Act.

I have been a manufacturer for more than 30 years. The lead people in all five departments have been with me from 25 to 30 years. Every employee has always had comprehensive health care, vacation, sick time and retirement plan. And we are unalterably opposed to being unionized. I have no interest in having a union for a business partner. (Just to add fuel to a separate union fire, we have a manufacturing plant in Mexico which, thanks to NAFTA, allows us the cost savings that keeps us in business here and able to retain our high-paying Massachusetts jobs.)

Mr. Sullivan, of the Utility Workers’ Union Of America Local 369 in Braintree, would have you believe that, while 12 percent of America’s labor force is unionized, the remaining 88 percent is stymied by current labor law in their desire to be represented by the likes of the United Auto Workers or the Teamsters.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Unions may complain that the National Labor Relations Board under President Bush was business friendly. But the appointment by President Obama of a rabid unionist as Secretary of Labor assures us that current law is more than adequate to represent union interests.

The Employee Free Choice Act is an insidious piece of legislation that gives employees very little, if any, “free choice.” If union organizers can cajole, or intimidate 51 percent of workers into signing a union card right in front of them (with no chance to reconsider) the business is unionized! Plus the employer is effectively gagged by the law from any free speech.

The only possible purpose of removing the right of American workers to a secret ballot is to open them up to naked intimidation by union goons at the employee entrance. Why else wouldn’t you be allowed to decide for yourself in private? This legislation is nothing more than the pay-off to the unions for $450 million of contributions to the Democratic party. It should be defeated as un-American.

Michael J. Wright writes from Weymouth

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